In clinics (mine and others) I notice there is a strong tendency by owners to make sure their horses “get it.” I’ll often talk about how a horse should know something or should be able to do something or should make a try at offering something. When I do this I find some people try to make sure their horse is doing or offering those things during the clinic. They turn “should” into “must”.

It’s my fault and I have to try to do better at being clear with my language. But I think some people convert a plan to teach a horse something into an agenda where the horse has to learn something.

Students take the word “should” to mean things are bad if their horse “can’t.” They question why their horse “can’t” when I tell them their horse “should.” The result is that people try to test that their horse “can” every step of the way.

This is not what I mean at all. When I say a horse should be able to do something I don’t mean their horse is badly educated or is a disappointment if it can’t. When I comment that a horse should be able to do something, I am referring to a horse being able to do that something one day. I don’t care if it’s today or in 10 years. I am not using the word “should” to set an agenda or timetable. I am using it to simply shine a light on a path for the training to progress.

But here is the problem. People constantly want to check how well their horse has learned a new skill. They are always testing their horse. They set up exercises to test the limit of their horse’s ability to perform them. It’s like they are searching for the spot where their horse will fail and use that as a measure of how well their horse has learned a task. It’s one thing to push the training towards the edge of what a horse can do, but it’s another thing to test how a horse does compared to our image of what it will be able to do one day.

Let me give you an example that I see from time to time.

I will often point out to people how unfocussed their horse is to them when leading it around. I notice how many steps the handler takes before their horse walks with them. I notice how long it takes for the horse to stop when the handler stops walking. I notice how much the horse drags behind when asked to trot on the lead rope. How much it stretches its neck before moving its feet when the handler first walks away. When I point these things out to a student some immediately start asking their horse to not only be more attentive to them but expect things to happen fast and snappy. They walk off with a sudden briskness and stop with a rude abruptness. And when their horse can’t possibly meet those new standards the handler gets assertive in an attempt to impose alertness and hurry in their horse. It’s setting the horse up for failure and it’s not fair.

I try very hard to instill the idea that working with a horse is like being with a friend who needs help. We should not act like a disciplinarian teacher ready to pounce on a student for any infraction. Yet people sometimes feel the need to be that disciplinarian.

I used to think it was just the way people misunderstood my meaning when I teach, but I realize now it is a common human trait to both test our horses and then want to make them pay a cost for failing. I see it when a horse won’t cross a scary puddle, stops in front of a challenging jump, or won’t load into a trailer that is too small for the horse. We test the limits of what our horse can do, knowing full well that it might end badly. Then when our horse fails to meet our standard we want to push the issue.

Instead of seeing every step or task as a lesson to help a horse, we sometimes see it as a test of our horse. Can he or can’t he? Will he or won’t he?

I see this problem as a failure in our appreciation of the type of relationship that reaps the greatest rewards and which we should be aiming towards. By always testing the limits of what our horse can do, and the resulting frequent failure to pass the test, we run the risk of at best creating a slavish relationship and at worst an adversarial one.